


Reflections of Blackened Wings

by lavender_demon (Lady_Lavender)



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Don't copy to another site, Drabble, Gen, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 02:13:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18729640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Lavender/pseuds/lavender_demon
Summary: Sometimes, when Nelo Angelo looks into a mirror, he puts his hair down and tries to force a smile. Seeing his reflection like this is almost physically painful, but he can't seem to stop.





	Reflections of Blackened Wings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cerberus_Brulee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerberus_Brulee/gifts), [sootandshadow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sootandshadow/gifts).



> gifted to the folks on discord who encouraged me to write this painful idea :')

When he was not bound to his armor, Nelo Angelo would spend his off-time looking in the mirror. Others thought him only indulging in vanity, likely another holdover from whatever life he had held before being taken in by Mundus — much like his honor. But no, while Nelo Angelo considered himself at least somewhat vain, given his meticulous appearance outside of his armor, the reflection that he looked at did not feel like it was his own.

For himself, he always kept his hair neatly slicked back and a stern expression always seemed to fall naturally on his face. When he looked in the mirror, staring at his reflection for hours, he might mess up his silvery hair and school his pale countenance into some approximation of a cocky grin. The motions felt unnatural; his own muscles did not want to cooperate with his intentional actions. Perhaps with time, they would respond more easily, though Nelo Angelo doubted that any amount of even earnest attempts would make the expression as effortlessly as the image in his mind's eye.

If there were words to describe the almost-physical pain in his chest that Nelo Angelo felt on seeing his own reflection in such a way, he did not know them. He was a demon, he had no need for emotions, for sentimentality. Every scrap of knowledge he'd gleaned about his own past said that his attachment to the figment in the mirror was a holdover of his time in the human world. He ought to discard it to become stronger, yet he could not bring himself to either the discipline necessary to do so on his own, or to tell Mundus and have his Master remove such a pesky and persistent phantom of his past.

A knock at his chamber door, and Nelo Angelo's feigned smile fell back into its normal resting frown, his hair slicked back as quickly as he could with the swipe of one hand. "What is it?" he called, sending a thread of power through to the door so that he could see his messenger.

"Lord Mundus requests your presence, Nelo Angelo. You are to be sent on a mission, to Mallet Island." A Shadow, deforming its feline head so that it could make words to speak, even though such an action put its weakest point in danger each time.

Nelo Angelo would not kill the messenger — it was not the Shadow's fault it bore unpleasant news, nor that he had been interrupted from his own dark thoughts and secretly self-inflicted pain because his Master required his presence.

"I will be there as soon as I don my armor, then."

He did not hold high hopes for Mundus sparing the life of this one Shadow on its delivery of the return message.


End file.
